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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday September 17, 1919
Cleveland, Ohio – Mother Jones Speaks at U. M. W. A. Convention, Part I
During the afternoon session of the sixth day of the Convention, Tuesday, September 16th, Mother Jones was introduced by Acting President John L. Lewis. The entire delegation arose to applaud Mother Jones as she was escorted to the platform.
From Stenographic Report by Mary Burke East:
Acting President Lewis: The chair will ask the delegates who are seated on either side of Mother Jones to escort her to the platform.
The entire delegation arose and applauded as Mother Jones was escorted to the platform.
Acting President Lewis:…This is one great assemblage of men where Mother Jones needs no introduction. She comes today from somewhere, I know not where, but from wherever she hails we know she has been on an errand of assistance and mercy to the down-trodden toilers, and she merely stops for a moment to come into her own union, there to greet her own boys. Her life has been devoted to the cause for which she has given her years and her wisdom and her ability. She has come to be loved by every man who has ever attended our conventions and by all the mine workers of the United States. We claim her as our own.
ADDRESS OF MOTHER JONES.
I didn’t come into the convention this afternoon to speak, but they took me by surprise—like the police did. I am not going to take up much of your time. There has been too much time spent in oratory. For the last four weeks I have been with the steel workers. If you want to see brutal autocracy, come with me to the steel centers and I will show it to you. The world does not dream of the conditions that exist there.
Eighteen years ago I talked to the men of Youngstown and they said to me: “What are we going to do, Mother?” “I don’t know what you are going to do unless you get together,” I told them. The steel company, with its usual methods of bribery, gave them stock at eighty dollars a share. In a few months it dropped to thirty dollars, although they could not strike. They had them by the throat. A few of them struck, but they had to go back beaten. If there is any body of men in the United States that require your thought and consideration it is the steel workers. I was in Monessen last Sunday and 18,000 men came to a meeting. Some of them were worn out, some had hopes for another day. Some had their backs bent with the burden of years and the whip of the master. But they all came believing there was a new message for them.
One chap said to them: “You know we are going to have a strike. Now you must be peaceful, we must have peace.” Imagine what a statement to make to men who were going on strike! I wonder if Washington was peaceful when he was cleaning hell out of King George’s men. I wonder if Lincoln was peaceful. I wonder if President Wilson was. And then this gentleman gets up and tells us we must be peaceful! When he sat down I said: “I want to take issue with you”—an old fossilized thing that hadn’t worked for twenty years, but he drew his salary—“I want to tell you we’re not going to have peace, we’re going to have hell! Strikes are not peace. We are striking for bread, for justice, for what belongs to us.”
The speaker who preceded me referred to Mr. Gary. The boys wrote and asked Mr. Gary to give them a hearing. He refused. Then the President of the United States wrote and asked him for a hearing and he refused again.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to be President of the United States for one month. If I had been President and Mr. Gary had said, “Nothing doing!” I would have sent two United States marshals up with a pair of handcuffs, have him brought to Washington and said: “Now, there is something doing!” Going on your knees to a bunch of robbers and begging will do no good. When any pirate insults the President of the United States he insults the whole nation.
The men of Monessen were told by the mayor on the first of April that they could not speak, but we talked anyhow. When I addressed the meeting I said: “Mr. Mayor, I will give you a lesson it may be well for you to follow. When I was a rather young woman, down on the Mississippi River, where there were no railroads to carry passengers in that direction, they used to go on the steamers. The freight was carried in those steamers and the ones that got in first got the most freight. One particular steamer was making an effort to get in first. [Here, sadly, Mother tells a well known racially offensive joke about letting off steam which we will not repeat.] What happened? In a few minutes the steam blew the captain and all of them into the Mississippi River. Mr. Mayor, let them blow off their steam. You are a great deal safer if they do that, and so is the nation.” These men in public office who want to stop free speech are creating more Bolshevism and I. W. W.ism than any other institutions you have got.
I said to the 18,000 men in that meeting: “How many of you are going to come into this strike?” They all put up their hands and gave three cheers for Uncle Sam.
The Sunday before we went to Duquesne. The secretary of the steel workers was arrested. Another man got up to speak and he was pulled off. And then, of course, I had to step in—it wouldn’t go unless I said something. I got up and all I got a chance to say was: “Men, stand like the men of ’76!” when two big, burly policemen got me by the shoulders. “What’s the matter?” said I. “Come and we will show you.” “All right,” said I. I went along. I have been in bull pens and locked up before, but this was the first time I was ever behind iron bars.
Then the lap dogs of the Gary crowd came there and one of them said: “Now, Mother Jones, I want to tell you something.” I had my nose out between the bars looking at him. He said: “With your experience you ought to do a wonderful lot of good; you should not be agitating.” “Why?” I asked. “Because,” he said, “you could do better work.” “I thought this was a very good work.” “Oh, no,” he said. “Stop a minute,” I said. “Right here in and around Pittsburgh today a million people went on their knees and paid a tribute to the man who agitated nineteen hundred years ago in Palestine; and not only that, but they arose and sang songs of gratitude to Him.”
Another lap dog of the steel trust said: “Oh, but He wasn’t an agitator.” “Why the hell did you hang him for then?” said I. He had no reply to make to that. Then he said that the people there were all foreigners. “That is the very reason we want to organize them,” I told him. “We want them to understand what American institutions stand for, and if they do not understand the language they can not understand the institutions.”
“But they are all contented,” he told me. “Then they are very dangerous citizens,” said I, “because an American citizen is never contented; he sees a civilization beyond, and beyond that he is going to aim at and go after. We are going to organize them all anyhow, and you can jail us all you want to. We build the jails. Now when we get brains enough we will put you in jail.”
[Photograph, paragraph breaks and emphasis added.]
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SOURCE
Quote Mother Jones, Strikes are not peace Clv UMWC p537, Sept 16, 1919
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=-V5ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA537
Cleveland UMWC, Sixth Day-Afternoon Session
-Tuesday Sept 16, 1919
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=-V5ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA531
Mother Jones Introduced
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=-V5ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA536
Address of Mother Jones
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=-V5ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA537
From:
Proceedings of Twenty-Seventh Consecutive and
-Fourth Biennial Convention of United Mine Workers of America,
Cleveland, Ohio, September 9-23, 1919
https://books.google.com/books?id=-V5ZAAAAYAAJ
Volume I-p1, Sept 9-15, 1919
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=-V5ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PP7
Volume II-p481, Sept 15-23, 1919
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=-V5ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA483
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Women in Industry, Eve Ns Hburg PA p2, Jan 6, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/57884211
See also:
The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988
https://books.google.com/books?id=vI-xAAAAIAAJ
Mother Jones Speaks
Collected Writings and Speeches
-ed by Philip S Foner
Monad Press, 1983
https://books.google.com/books?id=T_m5AAAAIAAJ
Re JLL as “Acting President,” see:
https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1625.html
In 1917, John P. White resigned as president of the UMW, and vice president Frank J. Hayes succeeded him. President Hayes appointed Lewis vice president, but due to president Hayes’ alcoholism, Lewis assumed Hayes’ duties in 1919, by becoming acting president. He was elected president of the UMWA in 1920.
Tag: Great Steel Strike of 1919
https://weneverforget.org/tag/great-steel-strike-of-1919/
Tag: National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers
https://weneverforget.org/tag/national-committee-for-organizing-iron-and-steel-workers/
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I Am A Union Woman – Deborah Holland